The Measure of Love
by illegalsweaters
Summary: Azula needs an answer to a question that she refuses to ask, and it makes for a disastrous date in Republic City. [TyZula O/S]


Azula revels in having Ty Lee clinging to her elbow as they meander through the Republic City ballroom. She enjoys the envious glares and being ultimately better than all of them. They look _hot_ , and Azula expects the questions from people who are daring enough.

"So, how'd you two get together?" asks a dull delegate and Azula looks him up and down wordlessly with a gaze that pierces his bones.

"She won me with her words," Ty Lee says with a soft smile. It is much more articulate than Ty Lee's usually gushy professions of love. "Well, and her hot body, duh."

The delegate drifts away and Azula leans against the wall and gazes at her girlfriend.

"I won you with my words, huh?" Azula asks, raising her left eyebrow.

"Yeah," Ty Lee says, her eyes glowing in admiration of Princess Azula. The woman Azula _knows_ that Ty Lee loves, else the former Kyoshi Warrior would have gone running in the opposite direction before Azula even got the date that she deserved. "You talk pretty."

"Well, one of us should be able to," Azula comments and Ty Lee gently punches her arm. It didn't do anything horrifying to Azula's body, and so the princess considers it to be a victory.

"I think this place is horrible," Ty Lee says as the conversation instantly fades.

Azula has to agree with her, mostly since she was forced into it by her brother, and showing off has gotten boring and pointless by this point.

"Well, perhaps we should risk arrest by disappearing," Azula suggests and Ty Lee shrugs.

"It's not like we'd actually get into trouble. We're too pretty to go to jail." Ty Lee grins, her words honest.

"Of course." Azula does not point out the past because it is not important.

They quietly make their escape, meandering through the thickest concentration of politicians and people trying to gain the favor of those politicians. Once all eyes are off of them and they are nearly pinned to the corner, they escape out of a door that has been propped open in a pathetic attempt to cool down the sweltering room.

"So, we're going somewhere?" Azula asks as she gazes ahead of her and Ty Lee nods.

"Somewhere, anywhere, nowhere. It doesn't really matter," Ty Lee says with a small, encouraging smile. Her girlfriend is not enthusiastic about spending a night wandering around Republic City, but she does not have anything better to do.

"You've never even snuck out of anything before," Ty Lee says brightly as she and Azula walk beneath the scaffolding. "You really haven't! Even when I tried to talk you into it when we were kids."

"I don't think this is sneaking out, since I am an adult," Azula says and Ty Lee doesn't have a good response to that.

She just grabs Azula by the arm and pulls her along through the streets.

* * *

Azula slips up the half-built stairs of the light grey building in the shadow night, Ty Lee in front of her. She leaps off of the final gap and walks to the edge of the scaffolding. The princess ignores her second thoughts and crosses her arms.

It isn't like she can't survive that fall.

Oh, is she getting old? She thinks she might be.

"Okay, this is the best view, right?" Ty Lee declares as she leans over the edge of the metal bars.

The princess restrains the desire to grab her and hold her down. They both are perfectly competent adults who...

"Don't throw yourself over the side!"

And Azula's cold demeanor disappears as she lunges forward and grabs her by the waist, her sharp nails tearing at Ty Lee's silk formal dress. Ty Lee gasps in shock, loses her footing, and they both nearly topple to the dark pavement far below them. But Ty Lee pushes herself off of her palm and Azula's bending reflexes manage to just make the fall backwards onto the damp cement behind them.

They smack into the floor and Azula thinks the might just fall through it.

 _Crash._

Ty Lee is giggling with the most unattractive snorting sound punctuating it.

"You were so scared."

"Was that intentional?"

"No, but you were!"

"Yes, I did not want to die over something so petty as saving your life."

"Mhm." Ty Lee shakes her head with a twisted smile.

Azula sighs and does not bother standing up. The sky is quite pretty from here, and they burn so brightly, like they do when she is out at sea. She doesn't ever think much about how dark the sky is in the Fire Nation.

Ty Lee does not get off of her, and they are suspended in motion in comfortable silence.

It happens quite frequently.

* * *

"I liked being rescued," Ty Lee says warmly as she grabs onto Azula as if letting go of her would be fatal. They wander down the street recklessly together. "It was fun. And you _were so scared_."

"If you say that one more time we are going back up those stairs so I can push you off."

"Uh-uh. Because you were so scared." Ty Lee kisses Azula's cheekbone. "Tonight is still young. Let's do more dangerous things."

Azula walks alongside her. "You don't think perhaps you should be more mature than sneaking onto construction sites and going wherever we are right now? I thought you were discussing staying in one place with me."

Ty Lee almost lets go of Azula before clinging more tightly. "I said I wanted that, and I do."

"You can't stay in one place for more than a few seconds. It bores you," Azula continues as they walk towards the bay. "I can't imagine you ever letting yourself be tied down, and the minute you get the chance, well..."

Azula wants to lock her up. Wants to keep her like a forced pet because Ty Lee has been a drifter for too long and Azula has been a prisoner for too long.

"I want you enough to make that sacrifice."

"Like you always say. Before you can't handle enough commitment to stay in the same pair of shoes for an entire day."

Ty Lee lets go this time and Azula's fingers spark before she realizes it and pulls back.

"You can't still be holding that against me... right?" Ty Lee looks like she has just fallen over that ledge. Azula does not respond and watches Ty Lee wring her hands. "Right? Azula, I want you and not that, okay... I'm different now."

Azula has no comment. "Of course you are. You wear your hair in a slightly different style and are able to suppress your delusion that you can fly. Oh, and now you've realized that _want_ me. You think I'm perfect. Of course, that's certain," Azula says as she dodges a kiss. _A kiss_. As if Ty Lee thinks that is going to remedy this. "You've told me how much you desperately need and desire and adore me ad naseum, But do you love me? Now that I think about it, you've never said it."

"I've said it a zillion times!"

"You've said it just the same way to half the people at that party." Azula averts her eyes and starts walking away. Ty Lee follows her like a nervous puppy.

Azula continues towards the beach and Ty Lee continues pursuing her.

* * *

Ty Lee tries to be sweet as can be as she picks up seashells and tries to fit them into her pockets. It doesn't work, and so she shoves them into her bra while Azula watches from afar, perched on a smooth boulder jutting up from the sand dunes.

"This one is pretty! Do you like this one?" Ty Lee shouts, waving around a chunk of seashell that Azula cannot see in the darkness, even as the stars illuminate the silhouette of potentially the worst mistake she has ever made.

Azula watches Ty Lee decide to keep that one, and then sees her turn to face the bonfire across the beach. Ty Lee gazes at the four teenagers there, who look pretty small and pathetic and ragged from afar. One of them is strumming an ugly wooden instrument, and Azula can see the exact moment that the girl next to him falls in love.

It disgusts her. She stands up and grabs the arm of her for-now girlfriend, and walks down the beach in the opposite direction.

"Ouch, ouch," Ty Lee winces as Azula ignores her. "What is it? Ouch." Ty Lee shrieks and Azula releases her. But it has nothing to do with the princess; _crash_ , the seashells have spilled out from Ty Lee's shirt and she has dived onto her knees to pick them up.

"You aren't very good at that," Azula says, smirking. "It's kind of like how you can't eat fire flakes without them falling into your shirt."

Ty Lee snickers as she drops a few of them and sits down, crossed legged, with the moon shining on her back.

"And then after I went to _anywhere_ that served them, I'd come home and take my bra off and they'd just all fall out on the floor." Ty Lee laughs again before realizing that those days were a long while ago.

Azula waits, and Ty Lee hands her a piece of sea glass that she attempts to drop, but slips into her pocket without a word.

* * *

"You've never said it either," Ty Lee says as they sit in a half-civilized park alone. They are across from each other at a bench, and Ty Lee has been trying to express to Azula what Azula has not truly expressed to her.

"Then how did I _win you with my words_?"

"Did you not like me saying that?" Ty Lee's eyes sparkle. "I'm sorry if you didn't. It's true is all."

"I don't mind." Azula looks away for a moment, the detached ice in her tone feeling like frostbite. "I wouldn't have agreed to trying again if I didn't have reason."

"Have reason?" Ty Lee asks loudly. " _Have reason_? I don't understand how you could ever be mad at me for not giving you a poetic speech about my _undying love_ and then just tell me you _have reason_ to give me another chance. I gave you more than one too!"

"I didn't leave."

"You couldn't have by _law_."

"I didn't ask you to want me."

"You just knew that I did and made it impossible for me to get out of that. I just wanted to be my own person for a while."

"Yes, because you didn't have enough time for that while I was rotting in an asylum and you were quite literally consorting with the enemy," Azula says coldly, eloquently, and Ty Lee wants to throw seashells at her because she is tongue tied in a response.

"I... I have to go," Ty Lee spits out with great effort.

Azula looks up at her and Ty Lee silently counts to three. She wants the princess to stop her, and Azula wants to stop her.

And _crash_ , Ty Lee pounds her first into the table, and watches Azula not even flinch at her powerful gesture. She almost broke her hand for her, but Azula is unimpressed.

She lets Ty Lee walk away, and Azula sits in a park alone at midnight.

* * *

Azula leaves eventually. She did not know where she was going to go after being abandoned on the worst date in history. The princess walks across the fledgling city with an involuntary glare on her lips that makes anyone awake at this hour avoid her.

She walks through the starlight under the flickering streetlamps and decides she might as well go back to her brother before he panics. The nighttime is close to soothing, somehow.

When she arrives at the hotel, she walks to the stairs, through the poorly illuminated hallways, and reaches into her pocket for the brass key Zuko handed her with a set of restrictions that a woman in her twenties does not need to hear.

But her fingertips just hit against a hunk of sandy sea glass, which she pulls out and starts to toss down before looking at it for a moment. She holds it up in the candlelight of the paper lanterns.

 **.**

 _"I got everything I ever wanted, but I didn't expect it to be so lonely. The admiration of everyone who crossed my path has always been hollow since, I mean, everyone has always loved and worshiped me, as they should. I want to express that it my exile here has been significantly less empty with you refusing to shut up for two seconds," Azula says silkily and Ty Lee thinks that might have been romance._

 _She thinks Azula might have just been open about feelings, despite the fact that she always kind of sounds like a politician._

 _"I..." Ty Lee stammers, her heart thundering._

 _Azula's eyes flash. "You have no answer for me? You refuse to be silent and have continuously been hitting on me for days, but now you have nothing to say? Perhaps I thought of your love too quickly."_

 _"I'm so bad at this," Ty Lee says, swaying from foot to foot because she doesn't know what she is supposed to say._

 _Azula does not want to react, but she wants something in exchange for her candor moments ago. On this dreadful island of her exile, with the only not dreadful thing about it standing in front of her staring at seashells as if they will whisper the answers to the request that Ty Lee stay a while._

 _"I've noticed," Azula says and Ty Lee takes a deep breath and shoves a piece of blue glass she retrieved from the volcanic beach while they were walking there together and the princess kind of thought that maybe exile wasn't horrible when you were alone._

 _Azula looks at the piece of rock that the sea vomited up._

 _"I don't know how to say but that's a really nice rock and I hope you like it because I really like you even better than a nice rock, and..." Ty Lee sucks in a breath and looks about to faint._

 _The princess supposes that is a favorable answer to her expression of affection._

 **.**

Azula is still looking at the piece of sea glass in her hand when the door opens.

"Where have you even been? I was about to make a search party," Zuko interrupts and Azula removes her gaze from the seashell.

"You were worried about me. That's adorable, ZuZu." She brushes past him and listens to his deep groan of frustration.

Princess Azula tries to remind herself about the fact that Ty Lee left more than once, that she is flighty and a poor investment. But Azula just tears at herself too fiercely as she tries to get ready for bed.

She sees the sea glass on the counter mocking her when she is about to walk to bed.

And the princess grabs it and throws it into the mirror as hard as she can, and watches it shatter.

 _Crash_.

But, of course, despite the shower of glass and the pounding of footsteps coming towards her door, the piece of blue rock is unscathed. It lies there as calmly as if she had gently set it down, and she clenches her jaw in rage.

The stone answers her question , and Azula wants to crush her own hand with it.

But neglecting that desire, Azula turns away and goes to make up some excuse about the noise before someone institutionalizes her.

* * *

That cold night, Azula lies awake and struggles to control her thoughts.

She used to have no problem with lying to herself, but right now she cannot convince her head to leave her be. Because she knows that while she won Ty Lee with her words, it might not be the same the other way around. Because she knows that she will regret it forever if she does not try to give Ty Lee the type of love she probably craves.

Azula thinks someone must verbalize their love; Ty Lee thinks actions speak louder and mean more.

And the princess has always known that. She stands up and walks into the bathroom, tiptoeing around the glass, and picks up the sea glass.

She sneaks out yet again, locates exactly the right window and climbs halfway up a construction site before she is certain.

Azula stares at the rock, then rolls her eyes at how childish she is, and throws it through the bedroom window of the girl she made run away crying tonight.

 _Crash_.


End file.
